Eleanor and Daniel’s Real Wedding was
blooming beautiful
. Fresh greens, peonies, fabulously flowered bridesmaid frocks and a stunning setting. Grab an ice cream, let’s go outside…With images by Ragdoll Photography.
Eleanor says:
We got engaged in Scotland at Aviemore – we went for a walk to the pub in the snow and en-route Dan surprised me with a bottle of champagne, two glasses and a proposal!We were married on 14th June 2014 at Prestwold Hall. This January, a year after the proposal we were back in Aviemore and decided we should really start to think about a wedding, two weeks later we were booked in at Prestwold. This worked perfectly for us as it was just enough time to prepare.
We wanted the day to be really relaxed and fun so everything was geared to be a little less formal. We opted for a colour palette of different greens – we like the outdoors and green looks so fresh and pretty.
I got my dress from The White Room in Southwell in Nottingham, I saw it hanging in a corner and instantly loved the shape and tulle, no need to look any further (think goodness as we had looked quite a lot).
I had a really big bouquet and I loved it! Justine Baxter provided the flowers and was so helpful as we knew very little about flowers except that I liked peonies.
Dan had his suit tailored from a shop in Leicester as he found that sizing was difficult to find.
I wanted the bridesmaids to be different and continue the relaxed feel and was so happy when I found their floral dresses unexpectedly at ASOS. The best men wore their own suits.
We used Rosie Hunt at Ragdoll Photography – I loved the relaxed style of Rosie’s photographs. I found them online and realised instantly that this was the photographer for us – I have already recommended Rosie to our friends that are getting married! Many of our guests have commented on Rosie too and said that she was so nice to everyone and I feel that the photographs show this as we are all very relaxed and often laughing.
My friend Sarah made my cake, Dan goes to scrambles in the mountains in Wales often so we based the cake on a mountain with our black Labrador Mabel at the summit and Sarah surprised us by adding our retro ice cream van ‘Lottie’ at the bottom! We actually own the retro ice cream van – we bought it last year for weddings and events when I was starting to look for suppliers for our own wedding but realised that there was no retro van in the Midlands.
For our favours we chose heart shaped mints in sweetie bags – these doubled as place names as I tied them with stamped luggage tags.
We had a harpist (Rowena) for the ceremony and during the drinks and meal – she was so good that we clapped as she left (some of us even stood) we then had a DJ in the evening and our ice cream van made an appearance!
After the wedding we honeymooned in Wales for 3 nights to go walking in the mountains (Dan’s choice) and one week in Mauritius (my Mum’s choice). Both were brilliant but I did need to stop for a power nap at be top of the mountain – two days is not long enough to recover from a wedding and be taken on a steep mountain walk for five hours!
My top tip for other Brides Up North would be to have a fantastic time, stay together for the majority and stay relaxed!
